When writing about Islamic violence it is essential to emphasise, first of all, in Aleksandr Solzehnitsyn’s words, that “the lineseparating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes,nor between political parties either – but right through every humanheart – and through all human hearts.”1To which we must add:“nor between religions”.Christians have been and continue to be guilty of human rights abuses and inhumanity to others, as have Muslims.It is not rational or evidence-based to single out one religious community as the source of all evil in the world.No religion has a monopoly on hypocrisy and evil.

It is necessary to emphasize, that while religions – and
ideologies in general – can influence human behavior, they are not the
only influence.Many other
factors come into play as well, such as culture, societal structures,
individual, group and national and all sorts of human desires.Consider, for example, the WWII Holocaust.Nazi
racist ideology was a powerful driver of the Holocaust, but it was not
the only driver. There was also, for example, plain old greed: the greed
of the many individuals who profited from the destruction of European
Jewry through looting their properties and possessions.

The influence religions wield is often mediated.Most people do not walk around with Bibles or Qurans in their pockets, checking holy scripture for every tiny act they perform.Instead they rely on habits, culture, personal life-history and how they have been taught and formed throughout their lifetime.Religious
influence is mediated over time through complex processes which include
worship and other forms of religious observance, education, family
life, and culture.

When religion does influence behavior, the effect is often not absolute.Religiously
inclined people are social and cultural beings, who can and do make
very individual choices, so their acts, even which influenced by
religion, are often not absolutely determined by it.2

It remains true that religions can and do influence
behavior, and the extent of this influence can be profound, the
multiplicity of other influences notwithstanding.3

Religions which are based upon a canon – foundational
texts – periodically go through renewals of belief and practice during
which believers attempt to strip away accretions in order to bring their
faith closer to what they find in these texts.This
is a bit like travelers on board a ship who remember from time to time
to consult their compass, after which they reset their course.When
this reset happens, the influence of a religion’s canon can increase,
while other influences on human behavior get comparatively weaker.

In our present era Islam is going through a long drawn-out global reset.Women
putting on veils in their millions are but one of many changes in
behavior inspired by the renewed influence of the Quran and the Sunna.At
such a time it is rational and reasonable to measure the actions of
believers against the texts to which they look for inspiration.

In summary, while it is simply not possible to reduce each
and every example of human action to religious principles, or verses
found in ancient texts, it is nevertheless true that religions do
influence behavior in important ways which deserve to be acknowledged,
especially when a religious reformation is underway.

The complexity of the interaction of faith and action
notwithstanding, we should not be surprised when revivalist Muslims seek
to implement principles found in the Qur’an or Islamic legal textbooks.

Colin Chapman

The most important point about Colin Chapman’s response is that he did not respond.He had nothing to say to my claim that he misrepresented the function of the jizya tax paid by Christians under Islam.There remains a world of difference between paying a tax to avoid military service and handing over gold to keep one’s head.

The two objections Chapman does make are that he
‘suspects’ I have oversimplified history, and that I ‘seem to believe’
that everything can be explained by appealing to texts.

Regarding ‘oversimplifying’, Chapman offers a handful of
snippets of historical information which are tangential to the arguments
I presented.Moreover his
claim that ‘conversion of large numbers of Christians came after two or
three centuries’ is contradicted by readily available evidence reported
in standard histories.4

Concerning Chapman’s second objection, I do not and have never believed that everything can be explained by appealing to texts.Nevertheless
that is not to say that texts are unimportant. An illustration of their
importance was the announcement of the Islamic State that it was
offering the Syrian Yazidis but two choices (see here and here) – conversion or death – with no option of paying jizya.This was in accordance with Sura 9:29 of the Quran, which offers the alternative of paying jizya only to the ‘People of the Book’, a category which IS claims the Yazidis do not fit.

In Iraq and Syria today people are being killed in patterns shaped by what is written in Islamic texts.This
being the case, it is rational and reasonable to engage with those
texts and to point how they are influencing actors on the ground.

John Azumah

In his critique,John Azumah attributes views to me which I do not hold.

I do not believe that ‘everything can be proven or disproven by drawing a straight line between text and action’.

I do not deny that there are ‘intervening and mediating
socio-political, ethnic, cultural, economic, historical and existential
factors’ which all contribute to determining the behavior of religious
people.

I do not ‘refuse to take such extra-textual forces into account’.

None of this means that it is illegitimate to explore the
textual authorities which the Islamic State claims guide its activities.

John Azumah presumes that I have condemned Islam based upon Boko Haram’s actions (here), and that I do this in a prejudiced, ignorant way.But
he puts the cart before the horse. In reality what I have sought to do
it so evaluate Boko Haram’s actions against the teachings of the faith
it professes.My purpose was not to condemn Islam, but to understand and explain Boko Haram.

It is disappointing that Azumah makes sweeping generalizations about my views without engaging with any specifics.For
example he claims that my ‘attitude’ to Qasim Rashid’s arguments about
Boko Haram was ‘dismissive’, but he did not find fault with the
reasoning which lead me to this conclusion.In reality I treated Rashid’s arguments with respect by engaging with them in serious way.This is the opposite of being dismissive.

Similarly, Azumah’s claim that I was ‘selective’ in the
sources I cited does not hold water. For example, when I pointed out
that IS’s announcement that conquered Christians have three choices, and
explained how the very phrases IS used are found in Islamic sacred
texts, no amount of alternative citations could have detracted from this
point.5

In response to Azumah’s suggestion that I was
‘disingenuous’ – which is to say, dishonest – when I stated that IS is perfectly capable of
defending its ideology, I re-assert that they are able to defend their views.Whether
one thinks their Islam is valid is another matter: my point is that
they have a well thought-through position which aspires to be
authentically Islamic and has evidence to back it.

Azumah seemed particularly trouble by my suggestion that IS claims to justify its murderous campaign as a ‘jihad’.Not
so, he says, because ‘they have no legal leg to stand on … this is the
preserve of a legitimate ruler, not a band of terrorists’.

To be precise, the
mainstream view in sharia law is that only the caliph – what Azumah
refers to as ‘a legitimate ruler’ – can wage aggressive jihad against
infidels outside of the house of Islam.But this begs the question: Whose rule is legitimate?This is a key issue in understanding Islamic radicalism.There
have been many instances in recent decades of leading Islamic jurists
issuing fatwas in support of jihadis whom others might label as
terrorists.For example many eminent scholars across the Sunni Muslim world declared jihad in June 2013 against the Assad regime.According to these scholars the fighters of IS were pursuing a legitimate jihad in Syria.6

In the light of such declarations, does Azumah really mean
to claim some kind of higher Islamic authority to rule that all these
scholars were out of line?Does
he really imagine that when they issued their fatwas, these scholars
had never heard of the principle that only a caliph can declare an
aggressive jihad against infidels, and that they did not take this into
account when they declared Assad’s rule to be illegitimate?<#note-51076d70">7

Azumah points out that Kurdish fighters are Muslims too,
as a riposte to my claim that IS is seeking to act in accordance with
Islamic sources. Azumah writes:‘if it is
justified to judge Islam on the basis of the actions of jihadi groups,
how then can we explain the actions of Kurdish Muslims who are fighting
and dying to protect Christian and Yazidi minorities? The Kurds are also
Muslims, reading the same Quran, following the same prophet and
performing the same daily prayers.’ As
with Boko Haram, my point was not to judge Islam, but to understand the
IS jihadis, and this comparison with the Kurds actually supports my
thesis. Human behavior has complex motivations, and not all Muslims’
actions can be explained in terms of their religion.The
Kurds may be Sunni Muslims, but the point is that they are fighting for
national independence, not the dominance of their religion.As one Kurdish soldier put it,‘They always shout “Allahu akbar”.We shouted “Long live Kurdistan”.’

Both Azumah and Chapman take exception to my statement
that ‘In reality Islamic coexistence with conquered Christian
populations was always regulated by the conditions of the dhimma, as defined above, under which non-Muslims have no inherent right to life, but had to purchase this right year after year.’They stress that conditions for Christians living under Islam varied in time and space, and with this I can only agree:thejizyaand other dhimma
regulations have not always been imposed consistently, least of all in
the modern period: there have been many local variations and
elaborations, and at times also omissions of application.

Nevertheless I stand by my statement that it is the theological construct of the dhimma,
together with its conditions, which has consistently furnished the
ideological framework for regulating the treatment of conquered
Christian communities.8

Why such resistance to theological explanations?

At the heart of Azumah’s objection to my article is not
the fact that there are correlations between IS abuses and Islamic
sources, nor even that some Western scholars have made false claims
about jihad and the dhimma.

The nub of the matter for Azumah is his aversion to
calling Islam the problem. He is perfectly aware of the texts which are
cited by Islamic radicals and does not deny their influence.However as a strategy for engagement he believes we must not problematize Islam itself “because it can go nowhere.”

Azumah believes that to call Islam the problem could have negative consequences:

•it would alienate Muslims who oppose radicalism;

•it would justify radical ‘twisted zealots’ - by validating their ‘excuses’; and

•it would inspire more fear, hatred and violence (Azumah even refers to bombing the Ka’bah in Mecca).

Azumah believes that problematizing Islam will fatally damage
the vitally important process of reconciliation, because blaming Islam
for the barbarity of some Muslims can only fuel anger and hatred towards Muslims on the one hand and incite more hate from Muslims on the other. He fears that naming Islam as the problem could trigger unresolvable catastrophic – even apocalyptic – global conflict.

I take exception to Azumah’s argument on two grounds.

First, the argument from adverse consequences is a logical fallacy.It is an argument based on fear, not on truth. Azumah’s
position pre-judges the question of whether and to what extent Islam
itself is responsible for the problems Muslims face.

Second, I do not accept that Azumah’s feared consequences
necessarily follow, and to the extent that they might, they do not
necessarily outweigh the negative consequences of not making truth the
standard of our explanations, rather than fear.This is in itself a subject which deserves more extensive comment than is possible here.Some key points are:

•arguments against
radicalism by moderate Muslims which do not hold up to scrutiny offer
only flimsy, unstable protection against radical violence: because they
are unsustainable in the end they only make problems worse by concealing
their true nature;

•it is immoral to equate explaining the reasoning of evildoers with justifying their acts;

•to name Islam as the problem is not the same thing as inciting hatred against Muslims, not least of all because Muslims suffer so much disadvantage from problems of Islam.

•to conceal the causes of injustice is to partner with it.

If Azumah’s critique of my article has been shaped by the
fear of negative consequences, Chapman’s response shows a concern with
other influences apart from religion, including Western imperialism,
Zionism, or global politics.One
might add other factors to Chapman’s list, including chronic economic
failure and disillusionment across the Middle East, a demographic
explosion of youth and young adults, and the legacy of decades of
dictatorship and military rule. However Chapman has a record of ignoring
or overlooking historical evidence and suppressing complexity when
weighing the contribution of Islamic theology against that of Zionism in
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.9

The fact that there can be multiple issues at play is not in itself an argument against the influence of religious motivations.Human
behavior has varied and complex causes but this does not disprove the
significance of religion as an explanation for human actions.

Conclusion

The question of whether Islam is the cause or the pretext for the Islamic State’s violence is clearly a sensitive one.While
acknowledging that there are complex factors which have contributed to
the emergence of IS, it nevertheless remains the case that this
fledgling would-be state’s policies show remarkable influences from
early Islamic texts.Moreover
the emergence of a living, breathing implementation of ancient
policies cannot be considered surprising, in the light of the teachings
of the global Islamic revival, which has been building up steam for
more than a century.

In response to John Azumah: it is unhelpful to declare Islam itself beyond critique for fear of negative consequences.That is intimidation.

In response to Colin Chapman: history matters, and to deal
with the facts of history objectively, including understanding the
contribution of sacred texts, means not letting one’s personal
preoccupations – such as antipathy to Zionism or Western colonialism –
cloud and distort one’s understanding of the present.

There can be many reasons for denial.Understanding those reasons is important, whether the reason is fear or some kind of bias.But
the fact remains that the Islamic State does pride itself on being
Islamic; it is a manifestation of the global Islamic resurgence; and the
inspiration it finds in the canon of Islam (the Quran and Sunna) can
help us to understand. We should have been able to anticipate many of its worst excesses.

Mark Durie is a theologian, human rights activist,
pastor of an Anglican church, a Shillman-Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the
Middle East Forum, and director of the Institute for Spiritual
Awareness. He has published many articles and books on the language and
culture of the Acehnese, Christian-Muslim relations and religious
freedom. A graduate of the Australian National University and the
Australian College of Theology, he has held visiting appointments at the
University of Leiden, MIT, UCLA and Stanford, and was elected a Fellow
of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992.

2. Consider for example the influence of Islamic teachings on the practice of female genital mutilation.While there are grounds in Islam which can be adduced in support of this practice (see here for a summary of a mainstream explanation), the way
in which this is practiced varies according to local conditions. For
example it is only in some parts of Africa that infibulation is
practiced, which is a form of female circumcision which nothing in Islam
can explain.As another
example, consider that sharia law law bans music, but music is much
loved and performed in many Muslim communities, Islamic law
notwithstanding.

3. For
example no-one could deny that the reason polygamy is legally practiced
in many Muslim societies today is linked to Islam’s teachings.Nevertheless
not all Islamic nations have legal polygamy: both Tunisia and Turkey
have banned the practice, under the influence of modern ideas, so even
here the influence of the religion is not absolute.

Another example is the specific distribution of female
circumcision across Muslim societies. Although variation in the extent
of Islamic female circumcision cannot be predicted from Islamic
teachings, its distribution can.Since
it is only in the Shafi’i Islamic school of law that the practice of
female circumcision is mandatory, it should be no surprise to find that
Muslims practice female circumcision most where Shafi’i law is
predominates.For example female circumcision is practiced in Saudi Arabia in Shafa’i areas, but not where the Hanbali code is followed.It
is found in Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Bahrain and Indonesia) where the
Shafa’i code is followed, but not in India where the Hanafi code
predominates.It is found in
Egypt, which is mainly Shafi’i, but not in neighbouring Libya which is
Maliki. It is found among the Kurds of Iraq, who follow the Shafi’i
school, but not among Iraqi Sunni Arabs, who follow Hanafi
jurisprudence.

4. The Cambridge History of Islam
edited by P.M. Holt, Ann K.S. Lambton, and Bernard Lewis reports that
already during the Ummayyad Caliphate (661-750), in the first 120 years
after Muhammad: “large numbers of non-Muslims embraced the faith of
their conquerors. ... One reason was certainly eagerness to come nearer
to the new masters, and to share the advantages the latter enjoyed, not
least among which was that of being far less heavily taxed.”

InThe First Dynasty of Islam: the Umayyad Caliphate AD 661-750,
(Routledge 2006, p.8) G. R. Hawting writes that by the end of the
Umayyad period “large numbers of the subject peoples had come to
identify themselves as Muslims,” and “the Muslim sources have many
references to the difficulties caused to Umayyad governors of Iraq and
Khurasan when large numbers of non-Arab non-Muslims attempted to accept
Islam ... in the early decades of the eighth century”

The classical study of this subject, D. C. Dennett’s Conversion and the Poll Tax in Early Islam, argued that while a simple line cannot be drawn between jizya
and conversion – for a whole host of reasons – there were indeed large
numbers of converts in the first few centuries, in variable patterns
depending upon local conditions, and the tax regime was one factor which
influenced conversion.

Bulliet’s study of conversion in the early Islamic centuries (Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period:An Essay in Quantitative History,
Harvard University Press, 1979) argues that in most of the conquered
areas the process of mass conversion conversion was well under way by
the end of the second century, and even in the first century a
significant proportion of the conquered populations had converted to
Islam, the pattern varying from region to region.

Concerning Egypt, Mu’awia, the first Ummayad Caliph (d.
680) is reported to have said that already in his time the population of
Egypt was one third Arabs, one third converts, and one third Copts
(i.e. Christians) (A. S. Tritton, The caliphs and their non-Muslim subjects, p.1)John
of Nikiu, eyewitness to the conquest of Egypt, reported that many
Christians converted even at the time of conquest. The Coptic History of the Patriarchs states that around 700 AD, many people were forced to become Muslims. It reports also that in 727 AD24,000 Copts converted to Islam in order to escape the jizya,
and in 750 AD ‘because of the heavy taxes and the burdens imposed upon
them, many rich and poor denied the religion of Christ.’ Al-Maqrizi
reported that Muslims had become a majority in Egypt by the 9th
century. (See Shaun O’Sullivan, 2006 ‘Coptic conversion and the
Islamization of Europe’, Mamlūk Studies Review 10.2: 65-69).

5. In
another example when I cited sources, from both Islamic scholars and
historical accounts, as evidence that the jiyza paid by conquered
Christians under Muslim rule is a redemption for their lives, and not an
exemption from military service or substitute for taxes on Muslims,
these citations were not arrived at by ignoring a host of opposing
evidence. On the contrary, I
spent years investigating both Islamic authorities and historical
accounts to arrive at this conclusion. This research explored more than
60 commentaries from all schools of Islamic jurisprudence, from every
century in the Islamic era, and from all across the Muslim world.It also engaged with both Muslim and non-Muslim historical sources.(See The Third Choice).
In my article for Lapido I presented four citations which made the
point clear, but there were many more that could have been used instead.

One view I was critiquing, that the jizya was an exemption from military service, did not even appear in the historical record until the late 19th century.This first only appeared after the Ottomans had replaced the jizya with a military exemption tax, the baddal-askari, in 1856.

6. Not all Muslim scholars agreed: a contrary view was put forward by Damascus-based Sunni scholar Sheikh Al-Buti, before he was killed by a Sunni suicide bomber.

7. By
denigrating jihadis as being akin to the 7th century Kharijites, Azumah
follows the line of Saudi authorities, who have used this label in an
attempt to stigmatize jihadism.However
Madawi Al-Rasheed in his study of Saudi jihadi movements, locates
jihadi violence, not at the margins of interpretation, but at its
centre:

“The terrorist attacks of the 1990’s, which increased in
frequency and magnitude in 2003–4, are not senseless and aimless acts by
a group of alienated youth, often described in official religious and
political circles as khawarij al-‘asr (contemporary Kharijites).
Perpetrators of violence are guided by cultural codes that draw on
sacred texts and interpretations by religious scholars who claim to
return to an authentic Islamic tradition, found not only in al-kitab wa ’l-sunna
(the book and the deeds of the Prophet) but also in medieval and more
recent commentaries on the texts by famous religious authorities among aimat al-da‘wa al-najdiyya (Najdi religious scholars).Jihadi violence is not at the margin of religious interpretation, but is in fact at its centre; hence the difficulties in defeating the rhetoric of jihad in the long term.”(Madawi Al-Rasheed, ‘Rituals of Life and Death: the politics and poetics of jihad in Saudi Arabia’, in Dying for Faith: religiously motivated violence in the contemporary world.Ed. Madawi Al-Rasheed and Marat Shterin. I.B. Taurus, 2009, p. 81.

8. This
is true even when the implementation has been partial and limited. Even
in a nation such Indonesia – where the Christian populations were never
conquered in the first place – the present-day treatment of churches is
shaped by dhimma principles.For
example the great difficulty of gaining official permits for new church
buildings in Indonesia and the associated practice of using this as a
pretext to demolish churches (see here) aligns with the dhimma principle that no new non-Muslim places of worship can be built under Islamic rule.In
Egypt, where regulations limiting building and renovation of churches
are even more discriminatory, the underlying theological driver is the
same.

Another example of the far-reaching impact of the dhimma worldview was the crippling Varlık Vergisi tax
imposed in a discriminatory fashion upon Turkish Christians during
WWII. This contributed greatly to the destruction of Christian
communities in Turkey, compelling many to emigrate.Like the Ottoman’s abolition of jizya almost century before, this tax was only removed at the insistence of Western powers.While technically it fell outside of dhimma regulations, like the jizya
it was a manifestation of a worldview that considered Christians as
owing a debt to the Muslim community and found it acceptable to apply a
policy of ‘plunder by taxation’.

9. For
example, he has written that ‘the first occasion when any Arab
government invoked the doctrine of jihad [against Israel] was in 1969’
(“Evangelicals, Islam and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” unpublished
paper presented at the Christ at the Check-Point conference, March 2010
www.christatthecheckpoint.com/lectures/Colin-Chapman.doc), but in fact
King Abdullah of Jordan announced in May 1948, referring to the war with
Israel: “He who will be killed will be a martyr; he who lives will be
glad of fighting for Palestine … I remind you of the Jihad and of
the martyrdom of your great-grandfathers,” and in December 1947 Al-Azhar
scholars called for a ‘worldwide jihad in defense of Arab Palestine’,
in an effort to annihilate the Zionists (Benny Morris, 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War,
Yale University Press, 2008, p. 65, 209). The Al-Azhar fatwa was
widely reported in international media at the time. There was also a
further 1956 Al-Azhar fatwa prohibiting reconciliation with Israel
“peace with Israel, so-called by those who have an interest in it, is
forbidden by the Islamic religious ruling, because it allows the plunder
to keep his loot and recognizes this plunderer’s right to it… the
Muslims are forbidden to reconcile with the Jews who had robbed the land
of Palestine and assaulted its people and their possessions, in any way
that allows the Jews to remain as a state on this holy Islamic land.
All Muslims, moreover, must cooperate in order to take this land back
from the hands of the plunderers and they should place weapons in the
hands of the Mujahideen’ so that they can launch a 'Jihad’ for that
purpose.” (Ephraim Karsh and P.R. Jumaraswamy, Islamic Attitudes to Israel, Routledge, 2013, p. 58).

2 comments:

Perhaps the best modern example of the rise of the IS is that of the founding of Saudi Arabia when Abdul Azziz al Saud used the same exhortations to the koran and the equally fanatical Wahabis to conquer Mecca for him.

Dr John Azumah's article in defense of his point of views duly criticized in your article, appears in a well known evangelical magazine in Brazil, ULTIMATO, http://www.ultimato.com.br/conteudo/desafiando-o-islamismo-radical, translated into Portuguese from http://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/01/challenging-radical-islam

The same arguments here from Dr. Azumah is in the article published in the strongly christian magazine, influential along very conservative lines. Sounds strange to me why they have published it.